The notion of music being nostalgic (or indeed anything else) before it's written surely at least confers upon its composer some kind of premonitory gift or a sense of prescience or something, however unnecessary either might have been in the circumstances. But no matter; whatever Ivor Novello's music might be - or rather might have been - suitable for, a Prom concert, however late, just isn't it, to my mind. I agree that most of it's pretty milk-and-waterish compared to the best of Rodgers & Hammerstein / Hart or, for that matter, Kern and Berlin - and it usually comes across as woefully lacking in imagination and vitality when considered alongside the work of Gershwin and Porter; its principal characteristic seems to be an embarassingly narrow range of a certain kind of gloopy sentimentality, repeated over and over again with insufficient difference between one show and another - less Glamorous Night than Glutinous and Trite.
It may come as some surprise to some here that, many years ago, in another incarnation, I ran the Pump Room Trio in Bath (which still exists today) and, in those far-off days, it was almost as mandatory to provide selections from some of his shows as it was to include the Viennese light classics - you know - Schönberg, Berg, Mahler (not!) - as though some kind of revival of a bygone age that never really occurred was expected of it, even by young people, at wedding receptions, corporate functions and the like as well as over the coffee and tea cups in the Pump Room itself; it always struck me just how weak-kneed Novello's waltzes were compared (perhaps rather unreasonably) to the marvellous creations of Johann Strauss II - and one had only to put any Novello show alongside Der Zigeunerbaron or Die Fledermaus for the saccharine wimpishness and instantaneous built-in datedness of the former to become quite painfully and glaringly obvious. Had anyone at that time told me that, decades later, there'd be an all-Novello Prom concert, my instinctive reaction would likely have hovered uncomfortably between guffawing at the sheer risibility of the idea and worrying about the possible state of the Proms in the 21st century.
I didn't listen to the Prom itself so wisely confine my remarks to generalities rather than observations on the actual performance - and they're only my personal opinion in any case - but my doubts that even a late night Prom devoted exclusively to the shows of Cole Porter would be a wise idea would at least be tempered to some degree by the certainty that the music would be consistently entertaining and the sentimentalitarian content (if any) would be obliged to take its proportionate place within the far wider expressive range of that fine song composer's work.
The oh-so-(purportedly) "English"-oriented songs of the Welshman Novello closely followed by the Austro-Danish Gurresanger; ah, perhaps a neatly concealed wacky sense of humour was at work behind this bit of programme planning after all and I've rather stupidly been missing the point!...
I don't know if anyone here recalls how, in Round the Horne / Beyond our Ken, there was an occasional slot for silly made-up composite names, sometimes of composers; whilst Lionel Bartók is the one that most easily sticks in my mind, that of Igor Novello has long struck me as a sadly missed opportunity...
It may come as some surprise to some here that, many years ago, in another incarnation, I ran the Pump Room Trio in Bath (which still exists today) and, in those far-off days, it was almost as mandatory to provide selections from some of his shows as it was to include the Viennese light classics - you know - Schönberg, Berg, Mahler (not!) - as though some kind of revival of a bygone age that never really occurred was expected of it, even by young people, at wedding receptions, corporate functions and the like as well as over the coffee and tea cups in the Pump Room itself; it always struck me just how weak-kneed Novello's waltzes were compared (perhaps rather unreasonably) to the marvellous creations of Johann Strauss II - and one had only to put any Novello show alongside Der Zigeunerbaron or Die Fledermaus for the saccharine wimpishness and instantaneous built-in datedness of the former to become quite painfully and glaringly obvious. Had anyone at that time told me that, decades later, there'd be an all-Novello Prom concert, my instinctive reaction would likely have hovered uncomfortably between guffawing at the sheer risibility of the idea and worrying about the possible state of the Proms in the 21st century.
I didn't listen to the Prom itself so wisely confine my remarks to generalities rather than observations on the actual performance - and they're only my personal opinion in any case - but my doubts that even a late night Prom devoted exclusively to the shows of Cole Porter would be a wise idea would at least be tempered to some degree by the certainty that the music would be consistently entertaining and the sentimentalitarian content (if any) would be obliged to take its proportionate place within the far wider expressive range of that fine song composer's work.
The oh-so-(purportedly) "English"-oriented songs of the Welshman Novello closely followed by the Austro-Danish Gurresanger; ah, perhaps a neatly concealed wacky sense of humour was at work behind this bit of programme planning after all and I've rather stupidly been missing the point!...
I don't know if anyone here recalls how, in Round the Horne / Beyond our Ken, there was an occasional slot for silly made-up composite names, sometimes of composers; whilst Lionel Bartók is the one that most easily sticks in my mind, that of Igor Novello has long struck me as a sadly missed opportunity...
- and merge her comments in due course with the original thread on this Prom which is 
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